


Alive

by noise_in_the_system



Series: Shoot One-Shot Collection [3]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Canon, is it an au? is it denial? you decide, lil bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25583365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noise_in_the_system/pseuds/noise_in_the_system
Summary: Post-series AU where my ship is together
Relationships: Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw
Series: Shoot One-Shot Collection [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805632
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	Alive

Shaw wakes up to her phone alarm blaring the most irritating jingle she has ever heard. It is certainly not her alarm tone, and, when she glances at the time while shutting off the alarm, she sees why. It is just past two in the morning—she didn’t set this.

“What do you want?” Shaw demands as she places her earwig into place.

“Morning, sweetie. We have a new number.”

“Right now?”

“No time like the present, Sameen.”

After over a year since the Machine chose this voice, Shaw was pretty much accustomed to the familiar quips adopted from Her voice’s original owner. But she still feels that small twinge of something that might be close to sadness.

“Fine,” she sighs as she pulls on a black t-shirt and jeans. She slips on her boots, places her gun into its holster on her hip, gives a still sleeping Bear a pat on his head, and is about to walk out the door when the Machine murmurs, “Better bring a jacket, sweetie. There’s a 98% chance of rain.”

“Seriously?” Shaw hisses as she pulls on a windbreaker. “You wake me up at two in the morning to go gallivanting into the rain? Am I going somewhere dry, at least?”

“Sorry,” She coos, not sounding very sorry at all.

The Machine leads her to the roof of a twenty-story building several blocks from Shaw’s apartment. As predicted, it started to downpour about thirty seconds after she walked outside, and Shaw can barely see through the sheets of rain spattering against the roof.

“Alright, why am I here?” she demands in an annoyed whisper. “It’s now two-thirty in the morning, it’s pouring, and I just had to climb nineteen flights of stairs. Where is this urgent number that couldn’t wait until I completed a REM cycle?”

When she is met with no answer, she sighs and walks out from under the doorway. Rain pelts down the hood of her jacket, and the wind sends a chill under her skin.

She scans the rooftop until she makes out a figure standing a few paces from the opposite edge of the roof. The figure—a woman, most likely, Shaw decides by her stance—is in only a thin maroon t-shirt and dark jeans, and she is gripping her arms against the cold. Her brown wavy hair sways in the strong wind in spite of a rainwater weighing it down. She must hear Shaw approaching, because she whirls around with a gun outstretched.

Shaw’s stomach drops and her heart rate increases when she sees the rain-soaked figure’s face.

“Root?” she breathes, lowering her gun without meaning to.

It’s a simulation. It must be.

But Samaritan is gone.

Root—or simRoot—doesn’t move, except to let the gun fall limply against her hip. She doesn’t speak, either. She doesn’t even offer that nauseatingly wide grin that she reserves only for flirting with Shaw. Her face is thinner than it was the last time Shaw saw her, and the sad expression makes her look not like Root at all.

“Root?” she asks again softly. Her heart pounds uncomfortably again, and she thinks that if she was ‘normal’, this reaction might be fear. “Is that really you?”

Root bites her lip and nods sharply. Her eyes glisten, and Shaw thinks that she might be crying, but it’s hard to tell with the rain.

Shaw walks towards her slowly, unsure of how she will respond. The old Root would have offered a goofy smile and an unapologetically overt innuendo (“Do you remember the last time you were this wet, Sameen? I can.”) but this is not the old Root. She isn’t even completely sure that it is a real Root at all.

When she is only a few inches away, Shaw whispers, “What are we?”

Root chokes down what might have been a laugh but sounds more like a sob.

“A four-alarm fire in an oil refinery,” she confirms.

It’s her voice. Not simRoot. Not MachineRoot. This is the real Root, the dead Root. The Root that matters most.

“You’re alive,” Shaw says, which sounds so stupid and obvious, but she thinks maybe it might help her believe it.

She nods and looks down. Yes, she is definitely crying.

“Are you okay?” Shaw demands. She could be injured. Her mind already whirls with plans to infiltrate the nearest hospital for supplies.

Root doesn’t answer for a moment, until she looks up, her wide brown eyes shimmering, and shakes her head with a whimpered, “No.”

At that, Root breaks down completely. Her thin frame crumbles, and she sinks into the drenched rooftop with her head in her hands.

Shaw immediately kneels beside her to her, paying no attention to the water soaking into her pants. She drapes her arms around around Root, who stiffens at first. Eventually, though, she sinks into Shaw’s familiar embrace. Her skin is icy against the Shaw’s warm palms.

“Are you hurt?” Shaw asks.

“No,” she chokes out. “It’s just… it’s been a really hard year, Shaw.”

Shaw shrugs off her rain jacket and places it onto Root’s quivering shoulders before pulling her close again. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the feeling of Root’s curls against her palm, or of her body pressed against hers. As close as the Machine can come to perfectly impersonating her, She isn’t tangible. She isn’t really Root. She wasn’t the person she loved—the person she had been longing for.

“It’s okay, Root,” Shaw whispers into her soaked hair. “You’re safe now.”


End file.
